1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates a wall mounted type microwave oven, and more particularly, to a wall mounted type microwave oven including an improved exhaust and cooling unit, which allows a direction of an outlet of an exhaust fan casing or an cooling fan casing to be changed to another direction while retaining an original size or reducing the original size thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
A conventional wall mounted type microwave oven is generally installed above an oven range is typically placed on kitchen appliances in a kitchen, and serves to perform an operation of exhausting, for example, exhaust air, smoke and food odors, which are generated from other cooking apparatuses, to an outside of the kitchen, as well as an operation of cooking food by high frequency electromagnetic waves in a typical microwave oven.
The wall mounted type microwave oven includes an oven cabinet forming an external appearance thereof as in a typical microwave oven, and is provided with a cooking chamber to cook foods therein and an electrical component compartment to house various electrical components, the cooking chamber and the electrical component compartment being isolated from each other by a partition plate. The wall mounted type microwave oven further includes an exhaust path defined between the cooking chamber and the oven cabinet, and an exhausting unit positioned at an upper portion of the exhaust path, so as to draw exhaust gas and the food odors generated from the other cooking apparatuses installed below the oven cabinet through the exhaust path and discharge the exhaust gas and the food odors to the outside of the kitchen.
The exhausting unit includes a driving motor, a pair of exhaust fans coupled to opposite ends of the driving motor, each of the exhaust fans having a common size, and a pair of casing surrounding the exhaust fans. Thus, according to the conventional exhausting unit, the pair of exhaust fans is rotated by a single driving motor to perform an exhausting operation.
Among the two sets of exhaust fans and respective casings, one set of the exhaust fan and the casing may be configured to cool the various electrical components installed in the electrical component compartment.
In this case, each of the exhaust fan casing and of the cooling fan casing is configured such that an axis of each of the fan casing (i.e., the exhaust fan casing and the cooling fan casing) is positioned to be eccentric to an axis of the corresponding fan, so as to draw the exhaust gas into the corresponding fan and to be discharged therefrom. That is, on a circumference of each of the fan casings, a major radius region, which corresponds to the maximum radius between the axis of the fan and the circumference of the fan casing, and a minor radius region, which corresponds to the minimum radius between the axis of the fan and the circumference of the fan casing, are present.
The exhaust fan casing is configured such that an outlet of the exhaust fan casing is selectively directable to any one of an upside direction, a rear direction and a front direction of the exhaust fan casing, depending on conditions of a location at which a wall mounted type microwave oven is installed, so as to allow the exhaust gas to be efficiently discharged to the outside of the kitchen. The cooling fan casing is configured such that an outlet of the cooling fan casing must be always directed toward only an electrical component compartment.
The conventional wall mounted type microwave oven includes an exhaust fan casing and a cooling fan casing which have a common size. Accordingly, when changing a direction of the outlet of the exhaust fan casing to another direction is necessary, either the exhaust fan casing or the cooling fan casing is rotated after being dismounted from the microwave oven and is remounted on the microwave oven in a state of the outlet of the fan casing being directed to a desired direction. Since the major radius region of the respective fan casing is rotated with respect to a fixed axis of the corresponding fan, by a change of a direction of the outlet of the respective fan casing, a part of the circumference of the respective fan casing corresponding to the major radius region protrudes in another direction.
Accordingly, to change the direction of the outlet of the exhaust fan casing, the wall mounted type microwave oven must have an additional space to accommodate a protrusion of one of the exhaust fan casing and the cooling fan casing due to the change of a position of the respective fan casing. Consequently, a volume of the cooking chamber to cook the food therein must be reduced, or a volume of the oven cabinet must be increased.